Abstract

Climate change is one of the most significant current threats to civilisation and nature andaccordingly a vast number of approaches towards its prevention are undertaken around the world.While some of these approaches are attempts at technical solutions, numerous agencies andexperts argue that behavioural change is needed in order to achieve any significant and long-termresults. Such adjustment require individual behavioural change in the young generations of today.Inducing behavioural changes on individuals, by education or otherwise, is, however, extremelydifficult, if at all possible. With inspiration in the early Frankfurter School philosophers Adornoand Horkheimer and their work Dialectic of Enlightenment, this thesis tackles the question of whattype of educational approaches that can be taken to truly offer a chance of having a real changeeffect. While it is important to educate the young generations in the science behind climatechange, it is argued that in order to change their actual behaviour, the education must relate theeffects of climate change to their everyday life and that the discourse of individual responsibilityshould be avoided. Current educational attempts are exemplified by the 2009 established ClimateEmbassy of the Danish green think tank CONCITO, which trains young so-called ClimateAmbassadors to give lectures on climate change at Danish public schools and high schools.Although the lectures given, importantly, make the students understand the consequences ofpeople’s current behaviour and make them understand that this behaviour is wrong, the educationmight not yield actual behavioural change. It is argued that one of the reasons for this is that theapproach of The Climate Embassy, and generally of many such organizations, work within therationality that the problems should be fixed within the current understanding of the structure ofsociety: capitalism, population of consumers, et cetera. Although a final solution to this verycomplex problem is not reached, the idea is presented that instead of lecturing on and discussingthe restrictions that people must impose upon themselves within the current society, the focusshould be kept on discussing what type of values in an ideal world, utopia, that the students wouldlike to live in under the considerations of climate change. As proposed in this thesis suchdiscussions should emerge from a critique of the contradictions, which the students find in theirreality between every day life and societal structures surrounding them. Taking this set out canlead to entirely new ideas and the approach might make the students not see the imposedsuggestions as restrictions where stepping outside these cause guilt feeling, but goals that wouldactually lead to a more favourable life.